Tuesday, 31 January 2017

How Not To Do It

Just had the opportunity to listen to part three of Getting
To Know The Network. As with parts one and two we should both praise and thank
Jimmy Stone and all those who contributed to a project which will no doubt form
the basis of doctorates and university courses in sports administration, under
the heading of 'how not to do it'. And while we have the fourth and final part
to look forward to (in a strange, depressing sort of way), let's not forget
that this isn't a history lesson. The play is still going on.

There are insights but for me the most important aspect of
part three is just the overwhelming impression left of the utter incompetence
of Duchatelet and Meire, how ignorant they were - and from all the evidence in
front of us still are - of what it takes to succeed in running a football club.
Positions of advantage not exploited, assets not utilised, behaviour almost
designed to fail. And to those who might respond by saying that from
Duchatelet's point of view things are not that bad, sell young players and
minimise the financial drain, it should be said that this is only the latest
'objective' thrust upon him because the others have not worked.

Take a simple example, the treatment of Michael Morrison (and
to a lesser extent Simon Church and Polish Pete). Just listen to the accounts
of how a guy who had given sterling service to our club and proven his quality
was pushed out. OK, they wanted him off the wage bill. But how dumb to do it in
the way they did, nastily and with no respect. Add to that stupidly, because
everyone could see how they behaved. Players would start to conclude there's no point
busting a gut for this club, the mood in the dressing room sours, etc etc. Why
is it that arrogant buffoons don't seem to stop for a second to consider the
consequences of their behaviour and whether those consequences are sufficient
to mean it is in your best interests to behave differently - never mind of
course questions of ethics? The answer I guess is because they are stupid, or
to be kind have a skills set which is not suited to making a success of team
enterprises. How long do we have to wait before our owner realises this?

Anyway, I hope all Addicks listen to the podcast and draw
their own conclusions. It is after all rather timely for it to be released on transfer
deadline day and to contain testimonies to support fans' views that
Duchatelet's attempts to do things on the cheap are not a recipe for success,
or perhaps that we can only expect success despite the actions of the regime. (Of
course, this was penned before confirmation of the signing of Messi.)

On that front, the splendid victory at Bolton must give us
grounds for hope as those sorts of results are seldom fluked. They usually
require good team spirit and if Robinson is succeeding in that area - and
continues to - I will try to stop laughing at what he says.

Finally, I'd only offer my belated sympathies to the family
and friends of Big Dave Shipperley. He is held in affection by all Addicks who
saw him play. My favourite memory of him - leaving aside that own goal, which did have rather more style about it than Darren Bent's recent classic - is what
seemed to be an entirely predictable but utterly unstoppable tactic from
corners. Big Ship goes to the far post, ball hung up there, he heads back
across goal, Killer puts it in the net. Ah, football was so much simpler back
then.

8 comments:

Why should he give it a rest? Nothing's changed and we are still being mismanaged by these idiots. I will assume you couldn't care less and haven't bothered to listen. Another fickle fan who will be moaning again before too much longer about how hopeless it is. If I thought ignoring it and hoping it would all get better by itself, I would, but I think we all know we are a third division feeder club all the time Duchatelet is here because he isn't interested in us, has zero ambition for the club and simply wants to cut his losses and get out without losing too much money.

Dave, couldn't ask you to handle all the comments could I? And CEC, I'm aware I'm sounding a bit like just singing the same old tune, but the podcast is an event. I'll try something different next time, perhaps.

BA, not had a chance to listen yet but it sounds as though my blood pressure will rise a few notches! One still would love to know what Roly gets out of his continued ownership after 3 years of failure. Even Katrien doesn't churn out the Roly doesn't do failure line anymore. The guy's been a disaster to football across Europe and at his age you'd think he go away and leave it all alone.

Phil, it is indeed a mystery. Presumably he enjoyed electronics as well as making a success out of his businesses in that field. Had a dabble in politics, not unusual for an inflated ego, didn't work but fair enough. Then why football? We've had mumblings about the community, if not me then who? But no real insight, which leads us to conclude that he is arrogant enough to believe that he can succeed at anything he turns his hand to. And now, even at his age, not self-aware enough to realise that's not true. It's quite sad really.

This is my opinion as to what I think the Regimes (or maybe KM’s) plan was for Charlton. Please let me apologise for posting this on your page but I feel that you and your readers are a better audience than other social media sites. Feel free to delete Early on, in her tenure, KM is quoted as saying, that she doesn’t care for the older fans. I think what she meant by this was she wanted to bring in a new type of fan. She has gone on record that she likes the Rugby Union type of fan. I cannot find any demographic of a typical Belgium fan, but I am sure it isn’t the same as the British one. So I think the plan was to 1. move the kick off time to 4 or 5pm. Similar to the continent 2. Get more Dutch/ Belgium youths into the academy and the team3. Build a Hotel in the ValleyThey could then offer packages to the near Continent of Eurostar weekend trips to London. Arrive 2-3 pm on a Saturday. Logistics says these clients would have to get to Lisle by about 11 am (euro time) Take in the football game then spend a night in London at a concert (O2) or a show return Sunday.Long term it may even be possible to get a Belgium/Dutch team into the Premier league. I also think that offering very cheap tickets for the lower tier of the North stand was a cynical attempt to shift the covered end choir. Thus enabling the closure of the upper tier while in the third league and then conversion to hotel/corporate seating in the future (maybe even night club for partying after the game)There are several things said and done over the period of their tenure that fits with this plan.I feel that the regime is beginning to realise that this approach is flawed because:1 3pm kick off is written in stone. (KM desire to get on the FA board maybe to change this, but it never going to happen)2 Closure of the emergency loan period 3 I also seem to remember to be an academy player you have to live within a 1.5 hours travelling time. There is no doubt in my mind they have lost sight of maintaining their core product which is THE TEAM,To use the cinema metaphor: The experience is the same for all films, but the crowds come to watch Star Wars not a subtitled French arts film. Charlton supporters are unique in that they understand and appreciate football better than most. We knew that we would be relegated last season by Christmas because no matter what points you might need to stay up the teams with the worst goal difference always go down.What made me proud to be a Charlton supporter? It was when we played Arsenal at home and Thierry Henry came to take a corner in front of the covered end and got a spontaneous round of applause from our fans. To me that summed up Charlton supporters to tee